


Five meets the universe

by LittleMissSweetheart



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: a very calm room, cosmic people, dolores (but not really), five gets a name, five has a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25886266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissSweetheart/pseuds/LittleMissSweetheart
Summary: Five is in an odd place, with an odd person. Nothing bad happens to him, and he is calm and happy (I feel bad for him okay)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Five meets the universe

**Author's Note:**

> It's a cute fic cause I've been very invested in tua and this is what i imagine the best place in the universe is

"Hello."

Five blinked and spun around wildly, panicked and confused. He didn't know where he was, and try as he might, he couldn't remember anything from before he had blinked. He tried, but it was just white, empty and clean, like he had been staring at a light bulb without it hurting his eyes. Then, suddenly, there was something, dragged into existence by that voice.

"It's okay."

Five's eyes adjusted a little more to the sudden existence of physical substance, and saw that it wasn't much different to the white. It was as if the white had been moulded and shaped into a building, white seamless walls and doorways without doors, every edge sharpened to perfection and every surface unblemished. It was like standing in someone's soul.

The room Five was stood in had five walls, one of which was a door, and contained three plinths, each as white and unblemished as the rest of the architecture, and that contained various sculptures. Disregarding his confusion for a moment, Five walked towards the one nearest to him and observed its sequence.

It was a thin metal pipe that began pointing at the ceiling, then curved horizontally, then vertically, then horizontally again, then pointed down at the plinth. The pipe was broken in four places, and in those gaps swung a pendulum. The pendulum had a hollow circle at each end, and as it swung side to side, the circles rocked in and out of the gaps in the pipe. As Five watched, a fat metal disk slid down the pipe. Instead of falling through the hole in the pipe, it slid through the circle, and continued on its journey, slipping off the end of the pipe and disappearing into the white of the plinth. Five watched this sequence four or five times, enjoying the seamless rhythm, before breaking away and examining his surroundings. He could hear a faint humming coming from somewhere, like a woman making up a song, very softly. It didn't sound like a threatening noise, but as Five walked he remained on edge, ready to defend himself. He walked through several rooms, each the same as the last, only with different sculptures, until he found a door.

It was the only door he had seen while he was walking around, and it didn't match the building at all. It was still white, but where the walls and floor were more like white made physical, this door had been painted. It was wooden, with rectangular indents and a tarnished gold handle. Five turned it, and walked in, not bothering to knock. He half expected the humming to be coming from another sculpture, so when he walked into the room he was surprised to see a girl. He wasn't aware that anyone else was there, in that weird white building, there hadn't been any signs of anyone living there. There had been no windows, no taps, no storage, no seats, nothing. Only smooth walls and pedestals. But in this room, there was a person.

She was dressed in a loose black dress that came to just above her knees, and white socks. She had fluffy hair that reached the middle of her neck, and she wasn't at all surprised to see Five. The interior of the room was different too. Instead of smooth white nothingness, this room had a rug. The rug was brown, with dark threads in various colours crisscrossing its area in geometric patterns. On the white walls hung a shiny handheld mirror and a drawn set of curtains on a golden rail. The curtains were a light pink, with a forget-me-not pattern, but Five wasn't interested in that. He walked briskly over to them, his powers not even occurring to him, and threw them open, intent on figuring out where on earth he was. When he drew the curtains back, however, they revealed nothing but the wall, blank and disappointing. Turning away from the curtains, he turned his eyes back on the girl. "Who are you?" he asked.

The girl was stood in front of a dark wooden secretary desk with the front closed, and was gently dusting the various ceramic figurines that sat on top. In the centre of this cluster of figurines was a music box. It was large and square, with an open front, and was painted to look like a circus tent. Inside, it had a wooden elephant with a painted back and three monkeys, one sitting on a swing, one climbing a pole, and one crouched on a stool. It was the brightest thing in the room, despite being covered in dust, and it was hard to look away from. Even so, the girl turned away to face Five and said "You already know my name." 

Her voice was clear as a bell and had a strange dictation, like a human pretending to an Android. Despite this, and against all instincts, it made Five feel safe.

"No I don't." said Five. "I've never met you before."

The girl frowned a little in thought. "Well, technically that's not true, but we aren't talking about that. You do know my name; every one knows my name. When you first saw me you knew what my name was, but you're pretending you didn't because it can't be my name. But you're right, and it is."

"Dolores?" Five asked incredulously.

The girl smiled and turned back to her cleaning, lifting a little ceramic angel and carefully wiping her with a cloth, before setting her down gently on top of the desk again.

"That's right."

"Your name is Dolores?"

"It is now, yes. I'm not always Dolores. I've been Lucille, I've been Micheal, I was Adrian once, that was lovely. But now you're here, and I'm Dolores."

"What do you do here Dolores?" Five asked, looking further at the room. There was nothing else to look at.

"Oh, nothing at all." smiled Dolores.

Inclining his head slightly, Five caught sight of a black briefcase tucked under the desk, silver clasps glinting. All the safety that Five had felt left his body in a moment, not that he showed it. "Well," he said nonchalantly, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning on his heel. "I've gotta hand it to them, the commission is getting creative. I guess briefcases get boring sometimes, you gotta create a new dimension just to keep the blood pumping, right?"

"Oh, no." said Dolores, polishing a glass bear. "I'm not involved in things. And I'm certainly not involved in the commission."

Five pulled the briefcase out from under the desk and Dolores quietly sidestepped out of the way. Flicking up the clasps, Five opened the case and looked with confusion at a set of dust cloths and thin tubes of glue and oil.

"Someone needs to look after the mechanisms." said Dolores, and Five pushed the briefcase back under the desk, scowling and confused.

"And I told you." Dolores continued, gently encasing a tiny glass elephant in the cloth and rubbing it between finger and thumb. "I'm not involved in the commission."

"Oh? So what are you involved in?"

"Nothing, I told you. I don't do things. I just, am things. I'm not God, I don't run Earth. I know God, she says hi to your brother by the way, but I'm not anything like that. I just got put together by what's there, and then things get added. I don't have control over it."

"So you know about me. About the apocalypse?"

"I don't know it, I am it. You couldn't tell me about the individual life cycles of your blood cells, could you?"

Five scowled. "Fine. You are the apocalypse. Is it in you that I stop it?"

Dolores looked at Five with pity in her eyes. "Yes."she said. "But you don't need to worry about that here. Nothing is happening here. You can stay as long as you want, and you won't be gone at all."

Five took this in. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked "You say you're everything.."

"Yes." Dolores nodded. "Everything that exists is in me. It had to go somewhere."

"So what about all the bad stuff? The fire and the death and the loneliness?"

Dolores looked embarrassed, briefly. "Well, you wouldn't judge a human for being ill, would you? It's just a strain of bacteria amongst all my other cells."

Five scoffed. "So cruelty is just space bacteria, huh." he muttered under his breath. "Wonder what that made Dad"

Dolores continued serenely cleaning her ceramics, until Five said "I can leave anytime?"

"Yep. Just decide to leave and you'll leave."

"I think I'll stay for a bit."

"Okay."

The room was filled with a peaceful silence, and Dolores continued cleaning her ceramics while Five watched, curiously fascinated. Her movements were barely considered, there was no hesitation in her actions. She operated just like one of the mechanisms outside. Dolores went to replace the now shiny owl, and sighed.

"What?" asked Five, who was already curiously attached to her.

Dolores looked at the desktop sadly. "I can't remember where it was." she said. "I dusted the counter top, and now the dust ring is gone. I can't see where to put it back."

Five tried to process how to comfort an age old cosmic being about a dust ring, when she said "Still. I suppose if the only way to know where you are is by how dirty it is, I don't think it's a very good place to be." She nestled the owl in between a seagull and a blue floral turtle and nodded her head subtly. "Sometimes it's better to be somewhere new."

They went back to silence, then Dolores turned to Five with an amused smile. "Oh!" she said. "You've never had a name. How interesting, that I've had so many and you've never had one."

Five thought about this. "I guess I haven't." he said, an odd sombreness to his voice. "Ah well" he shrugged. "Never did me any harm."

"Would you like a name?" asked Dolores

If Five was taken aback, he didn't show it. "Would I have to do it?" he asked, feeling suddenly and utterly stripped of all his years, all the bitterness and pain falling away, leaving him truly a child. And he stood in front of a person offering the greatest gift they could, not in an attempt to manipulate or deceive, but in an act of such easy kindness, and he was suddenly mourning everything he never had, and could never be, and was never told, and in the face of such absence it would be easy to be scared, but it was hard to be scared with Dolores.

"Not if you don't want to." Dolores said, lifting a small glass angel and polishing underneath it. "Would you like me to do it?"

Five nodded, and he clasped his hands behind his back.

After contemplating this for a while, Dolores finally said "I think your name is Victor. Victor Hargreeves. Is that right?"

Victor nodded again. "Yes" he said. Victor felt overwhelmed with emotion, something he never thought he'd feel. He was stood in this empty building with the Universe, who seemed, with her every movement, to hold his soul in her hands and clean it like one of her ceramics, who had shown him the compassion he had wished every day in the apocalypse that the real Dolores could have given him.

"What will happen when I go back?" he asked.

"You'll go back to what you were doing. I think you were with your siblings." replied Dolores.

"And how did I get here?"

"I don't know. So many people pass through here, and I never know how. This isn't heaven, you aren't dead, this is just the start of the circle. I truly don't know how you got here."

"Does that music box work?"

"Yes." smiled Dolores. "Would you like to hear it?"

"Can you play it as I leave?"

Dolores nodded. "Victor, I wonder if I could ask a favour. I don't often name people, and I don't often get people like you here. I would like to remember you." She gestured to her ceramics and said "Pick one."

After a little moment of thought, Victor pointed to a squat, faded little frog with big round eyes. "This one, I think."

Dolores picked it up and held it in her cupped hands. "Do you feel that?" she asked.

It felt like his heart was wearing a jumper fresh out of the dryer. Victor nodded. "Good!" Dolores said, and she set the frog back down on the desk top. Then, winding up the music box, she smiled at Victor.

"Goodbye Victor Hargreeves." she said.

Victor felt more raw and emotional than he ever though he could feel, and saying goodbye to Dolores was difficult. He managed it though, and as the twinkly music box played, he felt the white descend over his eyes again, and was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> the statue was a video from wannerstedt on instagram, the link is here :) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4aFlQQh_4j/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link  
> sorry i cant hyperlink it


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